On 7 Jul 2005 at 11:50, Lee Actor wrote:

> > At 08:30 PM 7/7/05 +0200, Johannes Gebauer wrote:
> > >Well, actually, on any mid-range Mac, my pretty new iBook included,
> > >8 sounds is already over the top. Crackling, drop outs etc. So
> > >don't give me that, 64 is probably even impossible on a top range
> > >PC.
> >
> > What's chewing all the CPU? In Sonar, I can run 64-plus tracks of
> > soundfonts on the Athlon 1.4GHz system I built 4 years ago -- using
> > regular WMD drivers, not even ASIO. What's so intensive about GPO
> > vs. any other sample-based software?
> 
> It might be Finale.  I've noticed that during playback, Finale eats
> 99% of CPU cycles, even on my 3.2 GHz P4.  That makes it hard to even
> loop back and record the audio from external MIDI devices if Finale is
> generating the playback.

That report of who is using CPU cycles may be misleading, depending 
on how the tool you're using reports, and in how Finale launches the 
processes necessary to do the playback.

If a process is launched by another process, it may be considered a 
child thread, even though it's an independent program. That means 
that Finale could actually be using 1% of CPU, and the child process 
that plays the samples could be using the other 98%. In that case, 
it's not an inefficiency in Finale that is to blame for the heavy CPU 
usage, but an inefficiency in a process outside Finale that Finale 
depends on to get the job done, but which is counted as one of 
Finale's subthreads because it was launched by Finale.

So, don't be so ready to blame Finale for the problem. 

-- 
David W. Fenton                        http://www.bway.net/~dfenton
David Fenton Associates                http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc

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